


Seven Chalices in Reverse

by ilyahna1980



Series: The World (XXI) [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Angst and Humor, Eventual Smut, Friendship, M/M, Mages and Templars
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-12 12:31:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4479344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyahna1980/pseuds/ilyahna1980
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He has a name, but no one knows it. He has a past, but he flees from it. He has a future, and it is full of flames. </p><p>"Seven Chalices in Reverse" is the tale of Anders after his seventh and final escape attempt from the Circle. It is the tale of seven choices made by a mage struggling for his own identity that will define not only his own life, but the future of Thedas. It is a tale of friendship and loss, and of seeking his own meaning, free of the chains of the Circle. </p><p>This is a short prequel to The Hanged Man (XII), written from Anders' perspective. All parts of the series stand alone. This alludes to some major events of Awakening, but does not retell the game.</p><p> This story was originally written in first person / present tense, but I have edited it to third person / past tense because it sounds better that way, in my opinion. </p><p>Read "To Taste The Sun" by ilyahna and winebearcat if you are curious about the relationship between Amell and Anders. </p><p> </p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Seven of Cups (Chalices) reversed can suggest that you are refusing to examine yourself and to ask yourself what will truly fulfill you. Instead of taking a few quiet moments to reflect, you are using every waking hour to consume yourself with the active pursuits of things which may or may not satisfy you. You need to stop and give yourself some time and space to think carefully about where your best intentions lie.

_Anders realized suddenly that he had spent a lot of time staring at walls._

He would not say that he particularly enjoyed  looking at these most plain of architectural features, nor, he supposed, did anyone suddenly turn to their companion and say _"look at this fabulous wall! It's so straight!_ " It was certainly not true of them all. Walls that is. They were not all straight. Some leaned in, or tapered out, engineered with a poor hand and whispering of the future when they shall impart instability to those that rely upon them. Others are not sunk deeply enough within the ground, and shift when the ground freezes, foundations rising and lowering beneath the illimitable, incessant crawl of seasons across the earth, estimated in fissures that heave apart stone and wood alike in a slow decay of durability. Still more walls are held together by ultimately irresolute elements, eager to return to the great machine that is nature.

 _His least favorite of them all, however, those plainest of things that nevertheless manage to haunt his darkest hours, are round._  

It was an effort to replace his thoughts with something more pleasant. Even as he pictured Anenna's face, for it was she who taught him the art he was employing at this moment, he realized he was unable to remember her fondly. Even the delicate shape of her face was blotted in inky shadow, pooling there in his mind's eye like holes forming in fabric that is stretched over a fire. He does not know what became of her, after her Harrowing, except that the Templars said she was gone. He never saw her body, and there were no rites for her passing; there never were, for mages in the Circle. It did not matter what the cause for demise, whether it be old age, illness, or a failed trial ending in possession; the Templars seemed to think it best to treat every death in the same manner, with as little ceremony as possible. What their reasoning could be for this, He had contemplated many nights, surrounded by walls that wound endlessly around and around about him like rope, _squeezing his chest_ _until he thought he must..._

"What are you doing?" A soft voice asked a soft question with a touch of humor, and Anders glanced over his shoulder.

He was caught in what would have been a compromising position to a discerning eye, though the gaze that returned his at this moment is merely limpid with amused curiosity and sweetly dark. Anders pretended to absently drag his finger down the wall, but as it dropped to his side, he has completed a glyph that Anenna once taught him that detonates with a controlled charge upon a word of command. The water based solution he had drawn it with is invisible within seconds, swallowed by the porous surface.

"Just rescuing our evening from an uninvited eight legged beast," he said smoothly, dropping his brows down over playfully narrowed eyes.

Anders turned to face his companion and pretended to flick an invisible spider in his direction, and was rewarded with a startled grunt of loathing as Aden stepped back, one heel colliding with his own toes. He almost tumbled completely backward in an effort to put distance between himself and the mere idea of this insect, but Anders took a long step forward and steadied him with graceful fingers on an elbow. Anders was smirking now, eyes sparkling, and as Aden gets the ground firmly planted beneath him, the younger man returned his expression with annoyance that cannot help but be a mockery behind the twitch of a smile on his deliciously full lips.

"Let me help you with that," Anders said, nimbly divesting him of two pewter mugs balanced in Aden's left hand. He similarly recovered a bottle of wine that was tucked in his elbow, and before he turned away to deliver these objects to their purpose, he leaned down from his four inches of superior height and stole a kiss.

Anders left him with the suggestion of teeth on his bottom lip, and shifted in their small (he would not go so far as to say cozy) accommodations so that his back was to the bed, and sat down. He thumbed the cork from the bottle of wine with practiced expertise, and surreptitiously glanced about once more. He had thoroughly appraised the room already, but he only toed as far over the line of true caution as absolutely necessary.

The bed upon which he sat is one of three pieces of hastily constructed furniture, and if he earned his keep for the evening (and he always did), it will leave little to the imagination of the roadside inn's other patrons. Across from him was a chest of drawers, the purpose of which he cannot fathom, along with the idea of anyone remaining here long enough to feel the need to store clothing. It did, however, serve at this moment to bear an empty tin plate (as there was no table). Upon it were the remnants of an evening meal: the reddish rind of a stale yellow cheese, the crumbs of a loaf of bread, and the core of an apple, sides neatly planed by his companion's dagger.

Aden, who was content at the moment to let Anders pour the wine, was unlacing a boot which he has propped upon the only other object in the room: a three-legged stool alongside the door frame. There was, behind Anders, a window too small to do anything beyond let in the stench of dried manure from the adjoining stable, but otherwise the room was bare. Not even a rug.

He was not unused to such sparsity, but every unadorned wall, every purposeless piece of furniture, every window is a luxury and he took none of it for granted. He has been on the run from Templars, the ever-circling crows, the harbingers of doom, for almost a year now. It was the longest that he has remained free of their grasping claws, his most extended sojourn beneath the stars as a free man. Cheap wine, he reflected as he held the pewter cup to his lips, though there is metallic tang to the drink, still tastes like it flows from a one-hundred year old bottle. He could not help but savor it, and then he stretched his arm out to offer it to his companion. Aden took it, drinking and wincing, for he does not recognize that it is the bouquet of emancipation.

Anders poured another cup with a clink of glass against metal, and his ears pricked habitually to the other sounds about them. Aden was balanced precariously while unlacing a second boot and holding a cup of wine in one hand, and his ungainly motion scraped the stool across the wooden floor in an arrhythmical staccato. A horse must necessarily be not a great distance from the window behind me, for Anders heard it snort, and there was the jangling of metal tack as the beast no doubt thumped against its stall. Outside, near the front of the one level building, was the moderate common space, with its broad hearth, hay strewn flagstone, and long wooden table that served as a gathering place not only for what few actual patrons the inn could boast, but for the bulk of the hamlet's working men. They created a familiar, lulling drone of conversation and motion: mugs striking the surface of the table, laughter, a chair shifting across the floor, a name called in greeting. It was a soothing sound, the sounds of undisturbed insects in the bush and nonplussed birds in the boughs.

Aden finished wrestling himself out of his footwear, and turned to Anders. He genially tilted his cup out, for the distance is not overlong, and Anders matched the gesture with a flowering smile, clinking their cups against one another.

“Good stuff,” Anders said, and even though he meant it, Aden grinned as though he jested. “Did it ferment while you waited for it?”

Now he was partially kidding with him, but he noted the way Aden's expression slipped. He was indeed gone for some time, longer, perhaps, then necessary to procure a single bottle of wine.

“Got caught up talking to Pete,” he explained, and then looked marginally guilty. “I owed him a bit of coin.” He shrugged.

“Ah.” Anders dismissed it, not having meant to set his benefactor on edge.

To prove this, he deposited the bottle of wine, cork replaced, on the floor alongside the wall, at the head of the bed near where he had wedged his staff. The staff was innocuous looking, bearing little resemblance to the magnificent creations usually employed by mages, but he was an apostate, and better served by appearing merely to carry a utilitarian device for walking and self defense.

Turning his attention back to Aden, he used his free hand to hook two fingers beneath the hem of his homespun breeches, and drew him willingly forward to within inches of where Anders himself sat on the bed. These two fingers began to lazily and deftly, for he had his share of practice at this procedure, unlace the leather binding.

Aden watched him wordlessly. Anders noticed that he now took longer drinks of his wine and kept the cup held to his lips, hiding the lower half of his face. _Inexperienced at this then. Less work, but significantly less fun._

Anders took a sip of his own wine, wetting his lips before he shifted Aden's tunic up just enough to press them against the warm skin of his belly. Anders felt him inhale, his muscles tense, and already his eager arousal strained invitingly against the partially unlaced trousers. He brushed the tips of his fingers over this outline, which twitched under Anders' delicate touch. Aden hummed with pleasure, just above the edge of Anders' hearing, and he answered this with a smile even as his mouth caressed Aden's erection through the cloth of his breeches.

Several things were true of the man Anders had become while on the run from the Chantry, and he was ashamed of only a few. He did not regret spending a single coin of the money that he had stolen from DeChamps, a Templar who ranked highest in his disfavor when he absconded from the Circle for the last time. Nor stealing the heirloom family dagger that had belonged to the same man, which he traded for a month of peacefully haunting a back room at a brothel in Denerim called The Pearl. He might still have been there, as his healing skills were valued and authority not held in high regard, if not for the Blight.

He did, in all honesty, regret the times he had been forced to steal from common folk, his reserves long run dry. He would prolong any such act, flooding his system with creation magic to stave off the hunger pangs, but a flight through a Ferelden teeming with darkspawn did not always offer opportunities for even the most opportunistic men.

The metallic tang of the wine struck Anders' tongue again as he paused to drain the cup, and he set it aside to free each of his hands. The drink settled in his stomach like volcanic warmth, flowing outward into his veins, capillaries expanding in a pleasant blush across his pale cheeks. The meager meal Anders had shared with Aden, bought on the younger man's coin, was the first food he'd eaten in three days, and he had used considerable self control not to wolf it down with inelegance.

He had stopped in the small hamlet, set in a sparsely populated rural area northeast of Amaranthine, which had been his destination, and employed the ruse with the taciturn proprietor that he was awaiting someone (innkeepers do not take kindly to loiterers without coin). Before approaching the settlement, which he had scouted beforehand and decided upon because of this very establishment, he had used unattended trough water to scrub himself clean from days of sleeping outdoors. Or as well as one could do under such circumstances.

His only currency that evening had been his novelty and his considerable charm, neither of which Anders had any shame about using to his advantage. Hailing from the far northern country of the Anderfels, he was pale with a smattering of ginger freckles and blonde hair that hinted at red in a certain light, where the Fereldens were a dusky folk, by and large. He'd been told that he had bewitching eyes, almost cat-like, and certainly different from the flat black gaze of his companion. They served him well near fires, where they caught the light, and thusly had Anders placed himself this evening.

He was also educated, not only in book lore, but in local customs and legends, and possessed of a good voice for the telling of tales. Anders earned himself a mug of beer with a recitation of a story of werewolves that engaged several listeners, and another for the news he shared of the countryside he had recently traversed. This hamlet was far enough out of the way to have avoided all but distant mention of the Blight, and it was as fascinating a recount as myths of lupine aggressors.

Spending a month in a brothel had also taught Anders a few things, most especially how to read sexual attraction in his fellow man – all mankind, men and women alike. Thus he had allowed himself over the course of the evening to gradually seem to Aden as though he was weaving tales only for his amusement: enough overlong eye contact to engage, a smirk to seem coy, an open face to display interest. When Aden had asked him if he cared to join him to _speak in private of news from without_  , Anders knew exactly what he meant, and agreed with genuine enthusiasm. As much as he was grateful for the chance of dinner and a roof over his head, he was lonely, and the company was wanted.

Warmed by the wine and satiated by the food, Anders prepared to earn them both, and _Maker help him an actual bed._ Drawing the leather thong fully loose, he leaned forward with lips parted.

He heard the change in the dynamic of the din beyond, a subtle dimming of the disjointed cacophony, and deeply ingrained instincts reacted by pumping adrenaline through his body before his mind had fully realized that he was in danger. Aden reacted with a surprised _oomph_ because Anders' hand closed roughly where he had gathered him close, and then he released him.

Anders was on his feet the moment the door opened. He had only to stretch his arm to his right and his staff was in his hand, yanked from behind the bedstead, tumbling the bottle of wine. With a shoulder, he nudged Aden behind him, and belatedly realized that the younger man stepped back with expectation and was silent.

There were two men in the door, and more beyond. They were armed, and armored, their half-plate an opulent and incongruous display of their foreign nature. Emblazoned on their breasts is the symbol of Anders' oppression, sword and flame, from which he has fled this last year.

 _Templars_.

Immediately, a wave of negating energy collided with his own naturally generated field of mana, and the moment the nauseating miasma touched him, everything in his weak stomach threatened to come hurtling forth. He suddenly tasted copper, for he had bitten his tongue against the sensation. He backed away from the door, jostling Aden, who is muttering. Anders managed to catch the words _sorry_ and _coin_ which were all he needed to deduce what has happened.

While waiting for the wine he had returned with to “ferment,” the young man had no doubt encountered Anders' stalkers, startlingly closer than warranted for all his habitual care. Here was Anders' novelty working against him, as well as his maddening ability to always be a step ahead of them, regardless of the fact that they possessed a vial containing his blood which they used to track him like the dogs they were. Anders infuriated them, and had them slavering in their perpetual pursuit to the point they were ready to pay to see him caught.

The closest of the two men filling the door has sword in hand, and steps forward, and a small part of Anders caused a shoulder to flinch, a hand, almost, to dart out and grab his ungracious dinner companion and shove him at the Templars as a distraction, but the healer's heart that fed his limbs forestalled such rash action. Aden was little more than an innocent boy, poor and bedazzled by these ridiculous adjudicators of a law by which Anders does not abide.

Instead, Anders spoke.

“Absolutely abominable timing, gentlemen.”

The man that was approaching Anders is offset by his grin, and the tone of his voice, contradictory to the predicament of an apostate about to be on his unwilling way back to prison. He ground to a momentary halt, his mouth parting to speak, and that was all the time Anders needed.

He took two steps toward the wall, keeping his eyes locked with the Templar, and spoke the trigger word.

The wall of the small inn exploded outward in a shower of sparks and flame, which licked about the invisible lines of the glyph he had drawn earlier, requiring no mana to activate. The wood disintegrated, charred, and the fire faded, taking with it the integrity of the surface.

Anders slammed his staff into the particles that still clung together, creating an opening large enough for himself, and leapt through it without another thought.

And then he was running. Again.


	2. Chapter 2

It does not seem possible that rain can both fall from the sky and rise up from the ground at the same time, but that was certainly the way of things as Anders stumbled through the undergrowth. He struggled over a branch, robe catching, and he cursed as he heard it tear when he pulled it free. This robe, the breeches beneath, and the shoes on his feet constituted all the clothing he owned in the world. It came free with a snap as the fabric parted, and he lost his balance, barely avoiding tumbling over the log by leaning heavily on the staff planted on its other side.

One learned some fairly creative ways to curse Templars while in the Circle, and he employed a stream of them as a marching cadence, if one can even call stumbling and slogging through a forest turned swamp "marching." He was not even completely sure where he was going, just that he needed to get away. He could not go back to the Circle.

This was not the first time he has been this close to the dogs on his tail, though it has been a while, and not during this excursion into freedom. One thing can be said of a Blight: it does keep folk busy, and Templars with too much else to worry about beyond one escaped mage. He had heard rumors of what happened at Kinloch Hold after his last departure, and certainly the letters he was brazen enough to send were never returned to his false addresses. Whispers at The Pearl from travelers spoke of the tower falling to demons and blood mages, and at first he'd laughed at that. Templars and common folk were always on about blood magic and possession as though every mage in Thedas was one slip of their self control or one desperate dream away from capitulating to dark powers. He did ascribe to the adage, however, that there was no smoke without fire, and he'd heard it often enough that he worried significantly so to try to contact some of those he'd left behind.

 _Left behind._ He had lost more sleep in the past year over this one realization; indeed he had left people behind that he wished he had not. At the time, he had believed that he was stepping out of that gate to meet a personally consigned fate, to let the Templars find him and push them to kill him, because he had reached a point where he would rather die than be a prisoner. Anders still carried a kitchen knife as a weapon, little more than a paring blade, and to him it was a talisman which symbolized his unwillingness to be returned to the Circle. When, or if, the Templars caught him, he knew that magic would be useless, and he had intended to fight them with a weapon they would not expect, and force them to put a sword through him. Or try.

As time passed, however, the strong drink of freedom pooled in Anders' belly and its heady vapors clouded his mind. He began to imagine something different for himself. He dared to dream. Once he began to see past the dark certainty that he had lain upon himself upon his last escape, he began to pine for something else: those he had left behind to rot. Primary in his mind was Rylan Amell, whose ice-water blue eyes still haunted him, whose delicate, graceful hands would twine with Anders' in the darkness, and whose lips would whisper of love. Amell had been his first friend at Kinloch hold, and years later, would be his lover as well. Anders would have taken him with him, any of the times he had left: seven times he had asked, and seven times Amell refused him. Amell did not share Anders' illusions. Would he now, if what had happened at the Circle was truth? Was he even alive?

Lightning flashed above, followed immediately by a bone-cracking boom of thunder that indicated the storm was right on top of him. A gust of wind drove the rain sideways, pelting Anders in the face, and he held a hand over his eyes to shield them. His hair has come unbound, and was straggling across his forehead and down his nose, and Anders cursed it, along with everything else. _Where was he going?_

He paused behind a tree, attempting to get his bearings, though how one is to do this in a dark downpour in unfamiliar country, he did not know. He was panting, his breath a cloud on the chilly air that was burst apart by the wind, his back against the rough bark of a sodden tree. That was when he smelled smoke.

His first thought was that lightning had struck somewhere and caught a tree on fire, but then he had a hard time imagining any such blaze would last long in this torrent. He craned his head trying to see through the deluge and the gloom, and in another flash of lightning, he caught the skeletal outline of some sort of building beyond the trees. A large one. He decided it was as good a destination as any, and certainly better than lurking in this Maker forsaken forest. Driving his staff into the ground for purchase, he lurched forward through the sodden undergrowth.

Anders struggled on for what seems hours, pausing now and again when the storm crashed overhead to catch a glimpse of the building if he was able, and then suddenly, he was through the trees and spilling out onto a road. It was ground into mud, and looked recently churned, and for a moment he wondered if the Templars had found this avenue and proceeded him in anticipation.

He did not have time to second-guess himself, he decided, for if the Templars were instead behind him, they would not be far. He moved down the road, walking on the side where grass grew and concealed his footsteps, and as he drew nearer, Anders realized that the smell of smoke was coming from the building – or rather, the fortress, before him. He wracked his brain, sifting through his vast knowledge of geography and scores of memorized maps, but he could not place himself.

There was a wall surrounding the fortress, and Anders found a gate set within it that appeared to have been wrenched open by some magical force. The metal inlay was melted and the wood was warped and charred, askew upon its great hinges. Anders slipped through it, and came face to face with a nightmare.

The creature seemed as surprised to see Anders as he was to see it, though it would be difficult to say if it was quite as horrified, for its features were just that: horrific. A massive underbite caused a jaw to protrude which bristled with malformed, yellow-black teeth, set beneath a nose that was little more than two pulsating holes in a flat, coarsely textured face. Its eyes were disturbingly humanoid in shape, though in aspect they were reptilian: black, solid, and reflecting in that moment a burst of white lightning from above. This vile caricature of a man wore piecemeal, blood stained armor, and hefted an ax in a hand which ended in cracked claws.

In the same moment that Anders realized he was facing a darkspawn, the first he had ever actually seen, he realized several other things. One, the smoke he smelled and the demolished gate must be indicative of some siege upon the fortress behind it. Two, it was blessedly alone at the moment, though where there is one, there were assuredly others. Three, Anders must kill it before it kills him.

He had all these thoughts in the amount of time it took the flash of lightning over their heads to flicker out beneath the rolling wave of thunder, and then his staff whipped out, the heavy end smashing into the creature's mouth and slamming its head sideways. Anders was stronger than he looked, and a spurt of blood bursts from its mouth along with something solid he assumed must be a tooth, but it flew into the mud. Momentarily stunned, the claw clutching the ax faltered, and it gave Anders the time he needed to drag his mana to the surface and spin it into a force of destruction. More lightning, this from his own hand, burst through the air, and snatched the darkspawn with multitudinous fingers of crackling blue-white energy. Anders' fear and desperation had lent it force, and the creature seized violently before collapsing on the ground, limbs twitching in the throes of death as smoke coils up to be scattered by the wind.

Anders wasted no time observing his handiwork, satisfied the creature was dead, and he decided in a moment that darkspawn or no, this fortress was his best chance to hide. He stepped over the corpse at the same moment that he heard a shout behind him. A human voice, and one he recognized even over the rain from the inn earlier that day.

The Templars have found him.

Anders hurried for a looming darkness in the wall of the fortress that he assumed was an open door, prepared this time for whatever he might encounter, but he made it inside and down a corridor without seeing anything. Torches burned in sconces along the wall at intervals, the murky stone blackened above them. The place smelled of smoke and mildew, and though he passed a crest above a door at the end of the hallway, he did not recognize the symbols.

He had taken only a moment to glance through a cracked opening in the door, seeing no more darkspawn in the immediate vicinity. Pushing through, he tugged it closed and rushed along a landing overshadowing a larger hall. The stairs leading into this hall had been blocked with boxes and fallen furniture, and by this he surmised that whoever had been the caretakers or residents of this domicile had been besieged by darkspawn long enough to have made an effort to barricade themselves in the upper levels.

Anders reached yet another door, standing partially open, but the sound from within made him stop before he stepped through it. He heard voices, a guttural, gravelly semblance of human speech that he knew was made from no human tongue. There was snorting laughter that sounded like the braying of a pig, and a clatter of metal, and he realized there were numerous darkspawn in this room. More, perhaps, than he could deal with on his own.

Distantly, Anders heard the door at the end of the corridor through which he had just fled slam shut, probably dragged into its frame by the wind as the Templars entered.

He is caught. He is between the ravening dogs and the darkspawn. For a brief moment, Anders hovered outside that door, thinking of simply wrenching it open and walking into the arms of death, but the will to live, to triumph, surged out of the inner recesses of his being and he made a snap decision.

To his left, along the wall, were two large grain barrels, easily as tall as his waist, and they created a small shadow. Checking the entrance the Templars would no doubt burst through at any moment, Anders slipped stealthily into this space, and began muttering wards in a shaking voice not more than a whisper. He was cloaking himself in yet more shadow, and generating misdirection; while he would not be invisible, someone not looking for exactly him in this corner will see what they expect to see, such as only darkness, or more barrels.

He finished just as the door he had recently passed through was shoved open. Three templars entered, and Anders could tell from their leery posture that they too are expecting darkspawn. He mouthed a silent prayer to the Maker that they are not casting their dampening fields out of caution. If so, his wards will fail when they pass him, and the only thing between himself and being dragged back to the Circle will be the chance that they do not look in his direction.

Anders does not even dare to breathe as they approach, though he could not help but smile as their half plate and their boots made enough noise that he heard the darkspawn in the room beyond quiet, surely alert now that they are no longer alone. The Templars go so far as to mutter to one another, suggesting that Anders must have come through here, and then one reached out to yank open the door.

Weapons were immediately drawn in a hiss of steel and rasp of leather. The silence erupted in shouting, and the Templars were through the door, which was fully open now, having connected with the barrels Anders hide behind with a thunk. It shielded him from view in his shrouded corner, and he listened as battle commenced. He heard the wet report of a blade meeting flesh, the clang and scrape of metal upon metal, the grunts of exertion, a cry of pain, and then the stench of voided bowels and piss that tells him that something, or someone, is dead.

Anders makes his decision at that moment. He will not let them take him, and he will not give them the chance to best these darkspawn and continue their pursuit.

Standing and twisting his body to the side, Anders pressed his eye to the crack between the door and the frame upon which it is hinged. He could see only a portion of the battle waged within: an arm wielding a sword flashed by, a body lay upon the floor, blood pooled across the stone, and there was the image of Templar heraldry as a one pivoted for a blow.

Inching along the wall, Anders pushed the door inward enough to allow his emaciated frame to slip between the barrels and the wooden barrier. He wasted no time in observing the scene, or picking targets, or second-guessing himself, but took one step into the overhang and held both hands out before him to arc fire at Templar and darkspawn alike.

While Anders specialty was creation magic, and healing, he can summon the power of destruction as well as any mage, and at this moment his power is augmented by rage, fear, and hatred. What flows forth from the ether at his fingertips was nothing short of an inferno, and catching all by surprise, melts flesh to armor, peels skin from exposed faces until there is naught but cracked, black bone, and fills the room with the awful stench of burnt flesh. Somewhere in the midst of creating this raging hell, he realized that he was smiling like a madman.

The last darkspawn falls, tumbling in a smoking ruin over the body of a Templar, and before Anders are no less than six dead bodies. His heart was hammering, and he was holding his breath, and he shook his hands suddenly to dissipate the heat crawling over his fingers. Anders stood and stared, the bodies of men who were only doing their Chantry ordained duty now almost unrecognizable alongside the corpses of creatures spawned from nightmare. These men perhaps had families. Loved ones. Dreams for the future which Anders has now destroyed, as they would have destroyed Anders'.

He looked, and he felt nothing.

“Maker's breath,” a soft voice mutters behind him, feminine and incongruous.

Anders whirled, and was faced with two women. They are both armored, and well armed, one with shield and sword and the other with a bow held to her side. His first thought is that he was fantastically glad they were not darkspawn, or more Templars, for he had just been contemplating his deed in such rapt fashion that they've entirely sneaked up on him. His second thought was that it the woman carrying the bow is quite beautiful, with striking, clear green eyes that seem too old for her fine-boned face. Dark blonde hair was tugged back into a ragged queue, and well shaped lips quirked in a frown as she noticed the montage of bodies behind me.

Clearing his throat, Anders said the first, absurd thing that came to his mind.

“I didn't do it.”

 

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

“I didn't do it....”

Why had he said that? Of course he'd done it, and now his eyes flicked from the cool stare of the woman before him to the ground at his feet, at the corpses which only moments before he had immolated with my wrath, and he felt sick. HIs stomach lurched, roiling, and the meager meal and the wine he had consumed … hours, years? … before threatened to be expelled.

He shoved these thoughts to the back of his mind for the moment, for the deed was done, and there was no undoing it, and there might very well be more darkspawn about. Turning back to the women hovering outside the door, Anders caught a small crease in the forehead of the one with the striking green eyes, a look he could not immediately place for it was gone quickly, and she raised an eyebrow.

“I am called Anders,” he said. “I fear I am a wanted apostate.”  _Might as well state the obvious._

Green Eyes peered at the bodies strewn at his  feet. “I can see why.”  _So she hadn't bought his story._

“An apostate?” the woman behind her exclaimed. “Here?”

“Well I wouldn't be an apostate if I was in the Circle, now would I?” Anders plastered a bright smile onto his face.

“Very funny, mage.”

“I do try,” he said, and his words were punctuated by the sound of something heavy shattering in the background. Flinching, he added: “I don't suppose you're here to take care of the darkspawn problem?”

The woman with green eyes burst into laughter. “My friend, that seems to be my lot in life.” She drew an arrow from the quiver at her back and leaned over the railing behind us, peering down the hall.

“Don't you know who you're talking to?” Her companion glared at Anders, managing to appear both affronted and surprised at the same time.

“Not clairvoyant, I'm afraid,” Anders said as he edged out of the doorway, away from the bodies at his feet. Smoke lay across the floor, eddying in unseen currents as though alive, and suddenly he wanted no part of it. His skin prickled with discomfort, revulsion, and the room threatened to spin around him until he placed a hand on the wall to steady himself.

“This is the Warden Commander,” the young woman went on. “Also your Queen.”

Anders glanced at the figure leaning over the balcony, and his first thought was that she didn’t look like a queen. The leather armor she wore was gouged out in places where claws had sought purchase, scuffed where a blade or an arrow had skirted its mark. She wore a cloak that might once have been green, but was now faded and trail-stained, ragged at the edges. Her eyes flicked to Anders as he appraised her appearance, and with a small grin, she raked his own sad figure with her eyes before returning to his face. He fared little better: his pauldrons were soaked and crinkled, and more than a few of his treasured feathers were missing, torn out by tree limbs. His robes were caked in mud to his thighs. His hair… well, he didn’t even want to think about his hair. He was sure there were twigs in it, if not worse.

“So you’re the one that slew the archdemon,” Anders intoned in a voice intended to convey appreciation.

Elissa Cousland, for it was she, lost her smile, and broke their brief eye contact, a shadow passing over her face. She could not have been more than nineteen, twenty years old : far too young to have such a deed upon her shoulders.

“Will you not bow, mage?” the other young woman asked. “You should be on your knees.”

Anders’ gaze snapped to her, irritated by her presumptuous nature. “I’m not in the habit of bowing, my lady. And I usually like to have someone buy me dinner before I get on my knees. And you are?”

The queen smiled at this, and her companion’s mouth fell open at this irreverent answer, but she managed her name: “I’m Mhairi.”

“Did you see any more of these things before you stopped for a bar-be-que?” Elissa said, stepping around Anders into the room and kicking a darkspawn corpse with a boot.

Anders glanced at the corpse just as its arm broke away in a spurt of bodily fluids and ash, and he swallowed, refusing to acknowledge the Templars.

“Um, just one. Are there more?”

“There are always more,” the Hero of Ferelden said grimly.

“Speaking of that,” Anders found himself following Elissa closely, Mhairi bringing up the rear, as the Warden Commander picked through the mess Anders’ had made in order to reach the opposite door. Again, there was a thunk, and distantly, the sound of a human voice, pitched high with fear. “I thought you took care of the whole Blight thing.”

She didn’t even glance at him as she began to pull the door open. “So did I.” Then she paused, hand still on the door, and rounded on him, piercing him with her ardent stare.

“I could use the help,” she stated simply. “Or you could take your chances out there.”

“That’s not much of a choice is it?” Anders frowned, suddenly cold in the drafty recess.

Elissa’s eyes roved over his form again, pausing on the shoddy excuse for a staff clutched with white knuckles in his left hand. Then she glanced at their feet, where the bodies of the Templars that had pursued him into the keep spoke of a keen will to live.

“It’s a choice, at least,” she said simply.

She was right about that, Anders realized, and he immediately liked her for it. It was a choice, and so he followed her through the keep, clearing it of its assailants, coming upon a dwarf that gave Anders a proximity buzz, battling a talking darkspawn (he still wasn’t sure what that was about), healing those they came across that he was able to help.

In the end, Anders had been rescued from his fate at the hands of yet more Templars by the intervention of the queen, and his induction into the Gray Wardens had been sanctioned by the king himself, though none of it had been much of a choice for him. It was always Rylock they sent to chase him down, and Anders knew her. She had a nasty temperament, and he infuriated her. With the deaths of the Templars she rightly blamed on him, there would have been no escaping a punishment that should have been delivered long ago: Tranquility. So Anders either joined the Grey Wardens, or allowed himself to have his connection to the Fade severed, to be made into the walking dead. 

It wasn't much of a choice. But as the Warden Commander had said, at least it was one.

Anders took it.  

* * *

 

Waking was less like waking and more like being torn from a fabric of corruption and darkness and shoved through the void into the light. His vision exploded with stars, darkening at the corners, and he realized after a moment of blinking furiously that it was because there was no air. He was suffocating. He was dying. He felt my hands cling to something, winding in it, holding on, solidity to drag him back to the surface. His head was screaming, a thousand guttural voices and the clamoring of crows. Millions and millions of crows. He could feel their wings in his skull. 

"BREATHE!" A voice broke through the din. A sharp sting on his face made the spots shimmer in the blackness, which was like a tide that was rising from the depths of Anders’ soul, lapping at the edges of his consciousness. 

The sting came again, and the tide was thrown back, and he sucked in a lungful of air. The stars exploded, blurred together, and became shapes. A shape. A candle burning, lazy and grounding. A face, wan, concerned, green eyes like a cat gazing down at him fiercely. 

Capillaries were expanding in his cheek, hot, and he focused on the pain, blinking hard. The woman before him appeared and reappeared as Anders’ vision swam, but finally came fully into focus. Her tawny hair had escaped her queue, straggling over her forehead, framing her freckled cheeks. Her brow was furrowed, speckled with tiny beads of sweat, shapely lips curled into a frown. 

"If you're not careful your face will freeze like that." It was Anders’ own voice speaking, sounding tinny through the ringing in his ears.

The woman's ... no, the queen's... lips parted and her eyebrows lifted, and for some reason Anders noticed that she managed to keep them well manicured, and he admired that. Then she snorted, a huff of air that resounded in her chest in a single burst of laughter that was half scoff. 

"Thank you, mother," she pretended to snarl, but her eyes glittered with amusement. Then she was touching Anders’ head, and smoothing back hair, and turned away long enough to locate a wet towel, squeezing excess water into a bowl. It was cool, dabbing at his skin, which felt clammy all of a sudden.

"Thought we'd lost you, too," she mumbled, laying the rag carefully across my forehead.

"Too? What about the others?" 

Her frown deepened, and I could see where creases would form when she was older, already outlined at the corners of her lips by burdens beyond her years. 

"Mhairi did not survive. You have been unconscious for hours. Raving." 

"Me raving isn't a sign of impending death, don't worry." Anders attempted a weak smile, and immediately wished he hadn't, for daggers lanced through his head and settled at the backs of his eyes. There was still whispering, an undercurrent of it just below the surface of sound. A dismal, black song. 

"Speaking of impending death," Elissa Cousland said with a chiding tone, "You're a terrible excuse for an apostate. You're half starved." 

"I'd say that's rather the par for apostates. Are you saying I'm not pretty?" Anders grumbled.

Elissa smiled at that, a quirk of one side of her lips that made her eyes crease. "No, you're very pretty. But you could stand to eat." 

"I could stand it," he agreed, and she stood up, mumbling that she would be right back, and left the room. 

Anders lay there, alone, tucked in blankets in a lower bunk very like those used in the Circle to house mages, and tried to decide if he felt safe. The Warden Commander had recruited him into the Wardens through the Right of Conscription, right out from under Rylock’s beaked nose, and the king had, again, supported her. Anders had survived drinking from the vile chalice, and was therefore, ostensibly, out of reach of the Templar order and the Circle. And yet, huddled there alone in the drafty room waiting for the Warden Commander to return, he did not feel secure. He never felt secure. It was as though the ground was always a moment away from shifting beneath him, or he was just a lapse of willpower from flying apart at the seams. His heart was thudding still, only louder this time, in tune with the dark music in his blood, and suddenly, he wanted to scream. To tear the blankets off and run, from all of it. From everything and everyone.

He sucked in a breath and had fingers tangled in the thin coverlet, ready to cast it aside, when the door reopened, and Elissa Cousland reappeared, bearing a wooden trencher with a chunk of bread, a bowl of soup, and something green. Grapes! How odd!

The Ferelden queen sat down beside Anders’ cot again, and proceeded to offer to feed him. He refused at first as a matter of pride, but when his hands shook so abysmally that he nearly spilled soup on himself, he relented. It was oddly comforting in a way, and they passed long minutes in silence, Anders’ anxiety decreasing as his blood sugar righted itself. She had even brought a mug of ale; it was weak, but delicious in his reckoning, and he welcomed it.

She had fed him most of the food on the plate - a single grape at a time, a small hunk of bread broken with her own fingers - when Anders noticed that she too was wan, and thin. Her high cheekbones stood out beneath her smattering of freckles, and her wrists appeared almost delicate. Impulsively, he plucked one of the remaining grapes from the plate and held it to her lips.

The Warden Commander stared at him as though he’d grown an extra head, but he pressed the grape at her pursed mouth until it threatened to burst, and finally she relented and snatched it with her teeth, chewing with a grin.

“Only my husband feeds me fruit from bed,” she mumbles around the morsel.

“Is that job open?” Anders asked, and offered her another grape.

The grin on her lips faded, and this time she took the fruit with her fingers before eating it, setting the tray of food aside. “Perhaps it should be, but no.”

“Trouble in paradise?” Anders asked. “The two of you didn’t seem particularly … happy to see one another.”

Green eyes grew slightly round at this observation, for indeed, in the courtyard, Anders had watched the king attempt to kiss his wife goodbye as she turned her face away from him. There had been little eye contact during their encounter, which was not Anders’ imagination of a happy marriage. Not that he had much to compare it to.

“Nosy, aren’t you?” she diverted.

“Terribly,” Anders admitted, grinning at her.

“You should just be grateful he does what I say,” she said, but Anders could tell she was joking, trying to avoid talking about him seriously. Even he knew when not to pry.

“I suppose I am grateful,” he said instead, allowing for the change of topic. “Rescuing me from Rylock, freeing me from the Circle once and for all, saving the world and all…”

Her pretty face flushed, though it was not the pleased flush of a woman receiving praise she wished to hear. She seemed more embarrassed. Time for another change of topic.

“They say you were at Kinloch Hold,” Anders ventured, and she met his eyes, nodding. Instantly, there was a cast to her features that bore sadness, and sympathy, and he realized that she was astute enough to have gleaned in that one statement why he had asked. And also, that the news could not be good.

Pulse quickening, anxiety rippling through his bloodstream, Anders suddenly wished he hadn’t asked, and his lips remained open, silent.

“It was awful,” the Warden Commander said quietly. “A group of blood mages tried to take over, many were killed, and yet other mages committed suicide…”

Anders realized when Elissa paused, brow furrowed in empathy at him, that he had found her arm and was squeezing it with white-knuckled fingers.

“There was … someone,” he forced himself to say in response to the unasked question in her face. “Someone special to me. You would know him if you saw him…”

“Anders,” she began. “It was a bloodbath. There were so many faces… so many dead…”

He could tell it haunted her, but he went on, desperate, suddenly, to know the answer to a question that had festered in his heart for long months.

“He would have been the same age as me,” he said. “Light brown hair: he always wore it down. Pale like cream. Eyes like a winter sky. You can’t forget his face. Amell, is his name.”

He watched something glorious pass across her features then: recognition. Indeed, Amell was distinctive, his noble blood product of careful breeding, lending him fine features and a forward manner.

“There was an Amell, now that you mention it,” the Warden Commander said. Anders found that she had moved her arm, so that instead of clutching it, she now held his hand.

“He was so grateful to see me that he kissed me, actually. Got blood all over my face.”

Anders laughed, a spurt of amusement at the vision that was nine parts overwhelming relief. “Yes, that sounds like him.”

“He begged to come with me,” Elissa said. “But they would not let him go.”

“Of course not,” Anders snapped, and his fingernails dug into her hand. The Warden Commander squeezed his fingers, and tucked his arm along his side.

“Take comfort, though, that your friend lives,” she intoned, then removed the rag from Anders’ forehead and dropped it back into the wash basin. Smoothing his hair once more, she said then: “And get some rest. You need it. We all do.”

Anders could only nod at this, for he was too overcome with emotion at hearing of Amell’s survival. The Warden Commander watched him for a moment, then nodded shortly, promising she would see him the next day, and entreated him not to worry. Then she stood, and took her leave.

Anders lay in the flickering firelight for a long time, memories ghosting through his mind of fleeting happiness in the walls of Kinloch. Of his friend, his lover. Anders had never understood the aura of complacency that hung over Amell, of resignation to his fate, and they had fought over it before, but Amell would never leave with him. And there was always that look he gave him whenever the Templars dragged him back: a mixture of sadness and bemusement. And relief.

Anders had not been able to convince him to leave before, but now, a year of freedom between them, the title of Grey Warden as armor, and Amell’s experience at Kinloch had changed the playing field. Amell wanted out.

Anders would see it done.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Any comment or kudo is very meaningful. I'd love to hear what could be improved upon.


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